Reflections on Carson's Book
So, I've been really immersed the past couple of weeks in the issues surrounding the Emerging Church. This weekend I finished D.A. Carson's Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, and I was quite impressed. He's taken a lot of flack in the blogosphere about this book, but his anaylsis and critique are pretty solid. I did see a few weaknesses. Namely, he focus almost entirely on the Emerging Church's interaction with postmodernism. He rightly questions the movement's absolute rejection of modernity and absolute embracing of postmodernity, but he doesn't explore some of the valid critiques of evangelicalism that the movement brings. Because of this, he fails to recognize many of the positive practices and reforms to which the Emerging Church is committed.
Aside from that, Carson identifies so many things about the Emerging Church that have made me uneasy. He shows how the movement's leaders have portrayed modernity and evangelicalism in an absolutist and reductionistic way. The version of history and philosophy they are presenting simply isn't the case. Their remedy for these perceived ailments many times involves questioning the historic faith itself. Anyway, I'm reading another book right now. I'll probably gives some more thoughts on the Emerging Church along the way.
posted by Kevin C @ 12:36 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Hey Kevin,
I started replying but it turned out to be a really long post so it put in one of my blogs and linked to your site from there. God check it out when you get the chance.
http://onourfaceworship.blogspot.com/2006/06/what-heck-is-emerging-church-anway.html
I don't know if you've seen this but here's a "letter" of sorts from Brian McLaren reflecting on the last year in Emergent and the criticism Emergent has received. I'd love to hear what you think.
this is a better link:
http://www.brianmclaren.net/archives/2006/06/emergent_reactions_spring_2006_374.html
Jessica - I read through the article you sent, and I was really encouraged. I hope that thosein the Emerging Church can provide much needed direction and renewal to us fundies in the evangelical world.
Kevin, I am reading Carson's book now for a seminary class, and I agree with many of your observations. It is unfortunate, I think, that his bias comes through so clearly in the first couple of chapters (for example, simply compare the length of the chapter praising the emerging church versus the chapter listing criticisms; the latter is about three times as long). The difficulty we have of finding truly balanced analyses of both the traditional/evangelical church and the emerging church is unfortunate.
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